Catching Wild Geese
by SnorkackCatcher
Summary: A peeved Torchwood team return to base to find out exactly why Jack sent them on what seemed like a wild-goose chase. Crossover with Doctor Who, various eras.


When a tired and thoroughly pissed off Torchwood team finally made it back to base, it was to find Jack Harkness sitting in his office and smiling insouciantly as if none of them had ever been away. The dark looks they exchanged at this sight clearly said they'd be quite happy to kill him for it – except that he'd only get back up again.

"Hi, guys! Had a good time?"

Owen was the first to recover the power of speech. "In a word, _no_. What the fuck has been going on? And where have _you_ been?"

Jack opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again and shook his head. "You don't want to know."

"Oh yes we bloody do. First you bugger off without so much as a 'see you later', then you send a message to tell us to hop on a plane to the arse end of the world …"

"And then when we _get_ there," added Gwen, "_you're not there_ and you leave us twiddling our thumbs …"

"… or other things in some cases …" interrupted Ianto, earning him a scowl from Owen.

"… before sending us another message out of the blue to tell us to come all the way _back_ again, just as we thought we were starting to get somewhere! It's like you _wanted_ us out of the way!"

Jack winced. "Relax, people! It wasn't me who sent that first message."

"Well who did, then?" asked Tosh, and then her eyes widened. "Not Bilis Manger again?" she added sharply.

Jack shook his head. "Would you believe … Saxon?"

"_Saxon?_" said Gwen in astonishment. "Why would he … _how_ would he … did he win the election then?"

"Did he_win the election_?" Jack stared at her. "Of course he won the election, where have you been?"

"Halfway up a fucking mountain in the Himalayas," Owen pointed out sourly. "It might _look_ like North Wales, but you can't get Jonathan Dimbleby announcing the results on BBC1 out there, funnily enough. We had to make our own entertainment – like trying to _do the job_ we thought you'd sent us there to do!"

Jack coughed. "Ah. Well, then … Saxon turned out to be an alien –" Jack paused for a moment, clearly struggling over what and how to explain, then shrugged "– basically, he and some of his … friends had this plan to take control of the Earth via the Archangel network. We put a stop to it, although they did manage to assassinate the US President. Actually that nearly got this country bombed until we straightened it out …"

"Wait a minute, who's _we_?" asked Ianto, who sounded distinctly hurt.

"Erm … mainly a woman called Jones – no, not Welsh, I'll introduce you sometime – and the man I … went off to meet originally. Another alien. Same kind as Saxon, actually. He's a Doctor."

"The right kind?" asked Gwen shrewdly, but she was overridden by an outraged Tosh, who asked, "Saxon hacked into our network to send a fake message from you? How did he get access? We're supposed to be separate from the government, remember?"

"_Alien_, remember?" said Jack in irritation. "_His_ alien tech was better than _our_ alien tech."

"Oh. All right, fair point."

Jack held up his hands. "Look, guys, I'm sorry you had to be caught up in this, OK? It's complicated, and I can't really talk about it at the moment. But look at it like this – at least he saw you as a threat, right? That's why he wanted you out of the way."

"Yeah, I suppose so," agreed Owen, somewhat unwillingly.

"That's settled then. I'm sorry you had a wasted few days. But as a matter of fact, for your information it seemed like a lot longer to me," he added with some heat.

Gwen chuckled. "Well, it wasn't _entirely_ wasted, was it, Owen?"

Jack blinked at her. "Gwen, you know what I told you before I left, so maybe I don't actually need to know …"

"Not that, you tosser!" said Owen, sounding highly offended, like a bank robber accused of the one job he hadn't actually done. "Even if we'd wanted to, it was too bloody cold up that sodding mountain to get your kit off!"

"We didn't _know_ what you wanted us to do, Jack," said Ianto placatingly. "So we tried to find out, and did a bit of exploring."

Tosh nodded. "We had some crude detectors with us, so we took a look around on the slopes of the mountain and found this funny sphere lying in the snow."

"Sphere?" Jack's face fell. "You picked up one of the Tocla … wait, you should never have found it in the first place, dismantling the paradox machine was supposed to reverse everything and seal it off like the Rift …"

"The_what_ machine?"

"Er, never mind. What did you do with the sphere?"

"Took it back to base and tried to find out what it was, of course. Owen was fiddling around with it, trying to get inside."

Jack shook his head. "Oh shit. This could be bad. Please tell me it didn't talk to you or start flying or sprouting knives or anything?"

"No, we didn't get it working," said Gwen with a baffled look, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief. "But we brought it back so we could have a go at it with a better set of tools. Owen, show it to Jack, would you?"

Owen suddenly looked chagrined and shuffled his feet. "Ah. Right. Look, I'm afraid I may have made a bit of a cock-up there …"

Everyone tried hard to look as if they weren't thinking _oh shit, not again_. "What happened?" asked Gwen through gritted teeth.

"Well, just before we got Jack's 'come home' message, I'd hooked it up to that Lavrellian dimensional phase coil we had in the field kit, but then I really had to nip out for a slash …"

"While you were in the middle of an experiment? There's a time and a place for everything, Owen, even physical needs," said Jack in resignation.

"… yeah, anyway, when I got back it had disappeared."

Tosh rolled her eyes. "You mean you disintegrated it? Or sent it out of phase? Oh, Owen …"

"Well I don't know, do I? Maybe a passing monk nicked it for his cell!"

"It just vanished?" Jack's expression took on a faraway look. "Wait a minute, what _time_ was that?"

His team looked at each other. "I'm not sure," said Tosh after a moment or two. "Maybe about four in the afternoon, local time?"

Jack tapped a few keys on his computer. "Time zones … Lhasa, Tibet … GMT plus _eight_ …" He sat back with a sigh of relief. "OK, guys, no problem. Panic over."

"Are you sure?" asked Owen. He sounded equally relieved, and very slightly abashed.

That earned him a brilliant smile. "Absolutely. Water under the bridge!"

The Torchwood team exchanged looks again; it was clear that there was something – probably a large number of somethings – that Jack wasn't telling them about what had happened. Then again, there didn't seem to be any more chance of forcing him to elaborate than of … well, getting an explanation of any of the numerous other things he hadn't seen fit to tell them.

"So now what?" asked Ianto after a moment, with a sort of nervous jocularity. "We're all back, so what deadly peril do we have to tackle next?"

- - - - -

The sphere rolled along the mountain path from the ancient monastery until it came to a point overlooking a deep drift that had lain unexplored for many years. It paused for a moment, then dropped, speeding down until it hit the white expanse hundreds of feet below. It burrowed through the snow until it found the cavity it sought.

Red eyes glowed. Great hairy limbs made tentative movements.

Somewhere in the trackless wastes of deep space, a great and malicious Intelligence stirred in response to the dimensional phase signal it had just received …

-------------------------------------

If you were wondering about the last section, may I direct your attention to the Classic Who Two serials _The Abominable Snowmen_ and _The Web of Fear_ … It was after all the sole excuse for writing this fic. :D


End file.
